SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn charts history as civilian crew conducts maiden spacewalk

New history was made in space exploration as a four-person crew of civilians conducted the first-ever commercial spacewalk as part of SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission.

Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman, Scott Poteet, a former pilot in the US Air Force, and SpaceX engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis comprised the team of spacewalkers.

SpaceX’s riskiest mission

Dubbed the riskiest mission of SpaceX so far, this is the first time a private crew set foot into the vacuum of the space. Earlier only government-appointed astronauts had accomplished the task. Polaris Dawn is not backed or planned by NASA neither regulated by the US government.

Having accomplished its mission, the team will now start its journey towards Earth with a splashdown scheduled off the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday (September 14).

How the spacewalk happened

After a delay of two-and-a-half hours, the spacewalk began at 10.50 pm GMT (6.12 am ET) on Friday (September 12) after the astronauts opened the hatch of the spacecraft and ventured outside.

Before the spacewalk began, the pressure inside the capsule was adjusted as part of the “pre-breathing” process to help the explorers’ bodies cope with the vacuum outside.

The spacecraft was travelling at an elliptical orbit of 376 km above the surface of the Earth at a speed of over 25,000 km per hour when its hatch was opened.

At around 7 am (ET), 41-year-old Isaacman, the mission’s commander, opened the hatch and was the first to step out into space. With SpaceX hosting a live webcast of the event, the billionaire’s feat was welcomed by loud cheering by the team back on Earth.

He was replaced by SpaceX engineer Gillis, who also spent 10 minutes in the space testing the mobility of her spacesuit.

Checking the efficacy of the suits in the challenging vacuum was one of the tasks of the team.

The duo who went one after another into the space, were secured by a 12-foot-long tether connected to the spaceship.

Although the other two civilian astronauts – Poteet, 50 and 38-year-old Menon, also a medical officer – stayed inside the Dragon capsule, they were exposed to the vacuum and performed their respective mobility exercises.

Crew safe

The crew did not experience any severe symptoms like motion sickness which is likely due to change in pressure and can sometimes prove fatal.

Besides the spacewalk, the team conducted several experiments like inter-satellite laser communication between the spacecraft and SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation.

The four had undergone intense training over a period of more than two years to cope with the mental and physical challenges of the space visit.

What is the aim of the mission?

While the main goal of the mission was to test the newly-developed spacesuits, the bigger vision is to develop advanced technologies that would enable SpaceX to travel to other planets and establish extra-terrestrial settlements.

The company’s new Extravehicular Activity (EVA) spacesuits, an upgraded version of the current Intravehicular (IVA) suit, was developed over two years to support the Polaris Dawn crew in the vacuum of space.

The company says such suits will become extremely important when SpaceX ventures into building bases on the Moon and on Mars.

"The development of this suit and the execution of the spacewalk will be important steps toward a scalable design for spacesuits on future long-duration missions as life becomes multiplanetary," says the Polaris programme’s website.

The company wants to improve the design of the spacesuit to accommodate different body types and ages and make it available at cheaper costs as part of its mission to make private space travel a reality.

Many firsts

The Polaris Dawn mission has broken NASA’s Gemini 11 mission of reaching an altitude of 1,373 km in 1996 by an altitude gain of 1,400 km. It is also the farthest humans have travelled since the Apollo Moon Mission in 1972 and is also the farthest any woman has travelled in space.

Has it broken rules?

Some experts are of the view that the mission violates rules of the Outer Space Treaty signed by the world powers during the Cold War in 1967. One of the article in the treaty reportedly mandates that activities undertaken by private entities in outer space need the authorisation and supervision of a state party.

“This is a mission which violates Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty (OST),” Al Jazeera quoted Tomasso Sgobba, executive director of the Netherlands-based International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety as saying.

“States shall be responsible for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental entities,” says one of the rules in the ‘Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies’.